


Lifetime of Joy, Eternity of Sorrow

by Wolfie1991



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ancient Vampire Carmilla, F/F, Werewolf Danny, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 09:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2423648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolfie1991/pseuds/Wolfie1991
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura and Carmilla were destined to always find each other, in every incarnation and their love was meant to span the centuries.</p><p>But at what cost?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lifetime of Joy, Eternity of Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this post ( http://wolfie1991.tumblr.com/post/99193668017/queerkarmy-thinks-about-carmilla-and-laura) and queerkarmy's (http://queerkarmy.tumblr.com/) freaking awesome soulmates AU headcanon that I kinda grabbed and ran with into an extra helping of hurties.
> 
> This is basically an ultra ancient vampire!Carmilla AU I wrote kinda for the heck of it, hope you enjoy.

 

_“Star crossed lovers.”_ Was the unoriginal blurb for the unoriginal big production movie about attractive young adults in love.

Carmilla scoffed at the poster staring back at her from the dingy theater display and next to it was some random vampire movie set to be the same trite bullshit it always were and that almost made her scoff even harder.

Soulmates, the red string, always finding your one no matter what life you are is romantic and beautiful and all sorts of other delightful things.

And absolutely not what it was cracked up to be.

Carmilla scowled darkly at the offending display, rapping it sharply with her knuckle and the laminated glass cracked into a myriad of shards that obscured the sappy poster from view.

Soulmates were well and nice if presented within the bounds of a single lifetime or even several lifetimes. Of course that was given one partner didn’t die and the other wasn’t an immortal folklore tale come to life.

To her it was a cruel joke, nothing more than some sort of divine punishment for a crime she did not know.

How many lifetimes had it been now? Even her prodigious vampire memory could not recall the times she had met, loved and lost her one and only.

The beautiful girl from Sarmizegetusa she had first met on the busy market during a scouting incursion had left such a mark that Carmilla had returned to the capital as often as she could. There were many trading convoys to escort there and it suited her just fine if that allowed her to meet up her tiny love.

Her time on the road melted into visiting her girl as often as trading allowed it and finally ended with them settling into a remote little farm on the banks of the Danube and for a while, they knew peace.

At the time, everything felt like it was set for life but the gods did not deem that acceptable.

The roving band of monsters that had gifted her with her particular condition found her hunting out in the woods one day and their leader had been so impressed with her skills and local fame as a tracker that she made her an offer to join their coven.

Like mists from the river, they had appeared one day, stomping horses scaring away her hard tracked prey and silencing the sounds of the forest.

Carmilla’s hackles had been raised immediately, by all accounts there was nothing interesting for a band of marauders to find out here, so why had they ventured so deep in the forest?

They grinned at her, an oily and revulsive smile in unnatural unison and their eyes bore into her, their otherworldly quality making her gnash her teeth. Every fiber in her body screamed at her to leave, to shoot her bow at the evil that appraised her with greedy eyes but found that she could not.

Carmilla had refused their generous offer, facing them with her head held high and then left without being stopped, the small band keeping still but their eyes were on here until she disappeared from their sight.

The next day, their village was no more, it’s people slaughtered and mangled all along the houses and streets, a spectacle of such disproportionate massacre she had voided her stomach copiously at the sight.

The woman, the leader, she was standing in the middle of the market, an avatar of pale death and again, she made her offer but this time she added a deadly clause.

_“Come with us and we’ll spare your wife.”_

Years had lost their meaning after that, a tepid blur of burning corpses and violence. Carmilla soon excelled at her undeath and the coven that had ripped her world asunder was weak in the grand scope of things and she had gifted them with true death in just under a decade.

She returned to her little village as soon as she could and found exactly what she had been expecting. The buildings were abandoned and crumbling, most likely the news of their far off village had echoed across the area and nobody had wanted to resettle back her. Her old farm was fortunately intact, no sign of struggle but also no sight of her love. The vampire hoped she was still alive and it took another couple of years wandering the Carpathians before she could track Laura down.

Her former wife had moved on and Carmilla was glad she had done so. A life lived alone because she was holding onto a ghost was the last thing the vampire had wanted for her.

Her choice of partner however, let something to be desired. A pine tree shaped like a woman from Dausdava had soothed all the dark places in her love’s being and Carmilla’s discrete observations did indeed reveal she loved her Laura with all her heart.

However the strange woman’s heart was all wolf and the vampire had had enough clashes with werewolves to know they could be unhinged and maniacal beasts with no compassion or control.

This woman, however, wasn’t any of that and the times Carmilla had stopped by had painted a very different picture than her other experiences with lycanthropes.

She was tender, loving and gave her love so much warmth that Carmilla had resigned herself to this twist of her faith.

If Laura was to be happy with the tall warrior, then it was all the vampire had wanted. Though it did nothing to the gaping wound where her heart once existed.

As the years passed, her visits grew less frequent. It was one thing to make sure Laura was safe and another to intrude on such intimate and domestic scenes unnecessarily. As with all mortals, one day her love had expired and Carmilla’s world crumbled yet again.

She knew Laura would die one day and she had thought she was ready for it, in a way, but as the man from the village relayed to her what had happened,her mind has ceased to function and it was all she could do to hit the unforgiving road without collapsing into sobs.

Dacia was no longer a home and with Carmilla’s last attachment to her mortal life gone, she had left and not once looked back.

Asia had been her first stop, all the Xiongnu conflicts in borders of their Khanate were an enticing distraction from the hurt and the pain but what she had not been counting on was not even two hundred years from the moment her mortal life had been set to rest to find _her_ again.

She looked different somehow, not much different from the locals but in an odd way she had not changed at all. Her Laura, her love, was still all there from when they had met in Dacia all those years ago.

Her heart began beating again for the first time in centuries and she nearly wept with joy at the chance. They rekindled their romance on the harsh steppes of Central Asia and it was almost like she had never left. It was like a balm that had erased Zia finding her on the forests of her home and the damned woman from Dausdava never had replaced her in Laura’s heart.

What a fool she had been to think fate could be so kind.

Carmilla thought of that time as the first cycle, the first time the events that would repeat across her years with unavoidable precision had begun happening.

Trouble found her even before Laura’s thirtieth birthday in the form of a murderous group of jiangshi she had crossed about a century back in Ṭūsfūn. They had come looking for her and again she was forced to leave her wife in hopes of keeping her safe.

She took Laura’s horse and left in the middle of the night, thinking that if her love thought she had left because she had grown bored with their life together, she’d feel less tempted to find her.

When she deemed safe to return, years after that night, she went in search of Laura again to make sure the other woman was ok.

What she found had felt like the collapse of the sky right on top of her head.

Laura hadn’t forgotten her, in the twenty or so years she had not seen Carmilla. Instead she had set out with her horse, scouring the steppes looking for any clue of the reclusive vampire.

That though, had been one of the possible outcomes of her abrupt exit. Laura would either believe her dead or be the stubborn tiny force of nature she was and not give up till she had a satisfying answer.

No, what had surprised her the most was that the werewolf woman was back. Not different yet the same, like Laura, but Carmilla was sure they were the same person from all those years ago.

And the cycle thus had progressed exactly like last time. Laura had found another love and another happiness with exactly the same woman as before but oddly, unlike back on Dacia, they kept on searching for Carmilla, kept on hoping they would find her.

It was something that made the vampire smile a bit. Despite being in a committed and very happy relationship with the damnable wolf, Laura hadn’t given up on making sure she knew what had happened to Carmilla.

The vampire always kept away and out of sight, her visits short and fleeting. Her enemies were numerous and leading them to someone she cared about more than anything this cursed existence had was the last thing she wanted, not to mention the needless pain she’d cause to Laura if she knew her first wife had been an undead creature.

As more and more lifetimes passed with only minor variations, Carmilla quickly realized she lived a loop, a repeat of a sequence of events that was inevitable.

She felt like she was being subjected to the eternal punishment in Tartarus the greeks often talked about.

No matter how many times she faced this trial, the wounds cut her just as deep as the first time and no matter what she did different, things always ended the same.

She was drawn to Laura like a moth to a bonfire and before she realized, danger was upon them yet again. It was like Carmilla had the wire strings of a puppet jutting from her limbs that forced her to approach her love every single time.

The vampire wondered how true that metaphor was.

The uncertainty of her future and the confusion over the repeated appearances of the wolf woman did nothing to help the pain she was figuring eternal.

If her soulmate was Laura, and Carmilla was certain she was, then _why_ oh why was the werewolf ultimately was the keeper of her love’s heart.

The vampire had tried everything she could think of to revert her fate, to avoid the situations she knew were going to happen but none ever came close to getting her a full lifetime with her love.

Fate could not be changed. One needed only to see the many protagonists and heroes from religions all across the world to figure that one out.

She was destined to meet and love Laura and regardless of how much she fought against it the result was the same.

Trouble found her like clockwork, the only thing that changed was the flavor and she was forced to leave.

Carmilla was not able to bear the thought of endangering the life of her precious lover.

And then there was also the issue with the woman from Dausdava. She too seemed stuck in the very same loop, though hers was infinitely more pleasurable.

Carmilla had hated the werewolf at first and then could not help but respect her. In every incarnation, her replacement had performed above and beyond as a lover, Carmilla had observed a love for Laura she now dared to see that perhaps was as deep as her own.

Across the eons, the vampire even found herself fostering a strong companionship with the tall woman.

In some lifetimes Carmilla had willingly revealed herself to Danny and in others she was caught watching by the keen senses of the werewolf.

The first time she was caught, a gigantic claymore had almost lopped her head off and she found herself struggling to explain to a furious, statuesque warrior that she was friend, not foe.

In those lifetimes, typically harsh times like war or famine, they had worked together to make sure Laura had the best life possible and it seemed to work.

It was not often she tried to cooperate with her old acquaintance from Dacia, not out of dislike for Danny but where vampires stored the eons within them, the children of the moon had much shorter memories.

Her observations over the years led her to conclude she could perhaps remember ninety years back, any further and Danny really did not remember. That meant Carmilla had to play a secondary game of every incarnation having to regain the other woman’s trust and it wasn't always quite so simple.

The vampire wished she could keep close the prodigious warrior, perhaps then she could keep her memory fresh but that revealed to be utterly impossible.

The machinations of destiny had woven a perfect, self sustaining fabric and every time Laura died, the werewolf disappeared abruptly, leaving a palpable hemorrhage of sorrow in her awake but no clue as to her destination.

Carmilla had searched high and low, across countries and across continents for the other woman but Danny would only resurface when she was to intervene with Laura and not a second before.

Again and again, love blossomed and was torn to shreds too soon and Carmilla was doomed to be the main actor and then helpless spectator in a cruel festival of hurt.

The centuries and generations had passed in an agonizing pace and the vampire grew more bitter yet her hide was still as thin as it had been when Zia had threatened her wife.

What kept her going was that Laura, her love, her soulmate, always lived her happily ever after.

Just not with her.

By the time western civilizations fancied themselves the great explorers of the world, Carmilla had tried not checking in on Laura.

The pain was overbearing, there was no way she felt like she could continue but she pressed on for reasons she could not fathom.

Deep down she was afraid that if she dared defy the gods by ending her own unlife and granted herself true death that perhaps Laura would suffer too, that she would be deprived of her happy ending.

Or it was part of the grand joke her existence was.

Worst of all was that her attempts to minimize her suffering by not checking in on Laura were for naught. By the third time she had found out Laura had died a premature death that even Danny could not protect her from, Carmilla went back to being the silent guardian and observer.

It was proof positive she was nothing more than a toy to destiny and fate, something to be laughed at and abused, for what power would burden someone with such a curse?

The uncaring abuse was scarred onto what was left of her and Carmilla could not deviate from the pattern.

Except…This cycle.

Carmilla opted out of heading directly to the dorm and instead sat by the lake, its inky depths most certainly housed some sort of kraken-sea serpent abomination, contemplating this odd development.

This cycle was wrong, wrong from the very start and as Carmilla’s eyes focused away from the dark still water of the lake, a cloying wave of panic rose within her.

The order of things was abundantly clear! Meet Laura, fall in love, leave, Danny.

But now this new development could not be the harbinger of good news. What would she do with the giant werewolf, a lit TA of all things, roaming about even before Laura loved her ?

Carmilla hugged herself and released a shuddering breath, tears threatening to spill over the near certainty that her future was about to turn pitch black and she did not have a single clue on how to prepare.

She was almost desperate enough to ask the dimwit squad for help.

 

 

 


End file.
